Jeff Koopersmith

Once Falsehoods Unstitch, Redouble Them
The Irrationality of George W. Bush
by Jeff Koopersmith

Nov. 11, 2003 -- NEW YORK -- One could very nearly hear the disgusted palms of Middle Eastern potentates slamming their desks in fury as George W. Bush made the latest in his inexhaustible string of diplomatic blunders this past Friday. There was the former Texas governor behind the podium, ratcheting up his rhetoric in a pathetic imitation of Ronald Reagan's fluky remarks in Berlin years ago calling upon then-Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to "Tear down this Wall!"

That's right: President Reagan's remarks that day were fluky -- not wise, not portentous, just a lucky statement in a retrospectively well-written speech that the Republican Party now pretends, with its usual passion for revisionist history, was the driving force behind the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Soviets were by that time already "in the balance," teetering beyond level many years prior and reaching the tipping point which would launch them into an internal revolution which changed the entire world.

Mr. Bush now wants to "democratize" the entire Middle East -- without being shrewd enough to do it.

With last Friday's speech, George W. Bush publicly expanded the mission of the United States in what was the first nightmarish admission by this White House that the Richard Perle/Paul Wolfowitz scheme, trumped up nearly fifteen years ago in a network of Neo-fascist think tanks, is yet alive and well: the exportation of American-style democracy by occupation, imperialism, economic pressure -- or, heck, "whatever it takes."

What makes this new declaration of policy a crisis, of course, is that this President has no idea what it takes to build a democracy -- and has forgotten that democracy is still on unstable ground in many locales. And yes, that includes the United States of America.

Bush is now challenging thousands of years of rule and culture in faraway places, in an atmosphere of unraveling lies and quickly-eroding voter confidence in him and in his team vis-à-vis nearly every aspect of his presidency.

To prove the point, none other than the hideous Mr. Perle again rose from the slime of his shattered reputation, this time on a Sunday political discussion program, to feign the position that a last-ditch effort to avert war in Iraq by Saddam Hussein through a "Lebanese" businessman and channeled through Perle was "ludicrous" and "a trap" -- another lie compounding two more lies. It turns out the entreaty was made by an American citizen.

The new Bush Prescription for Reelection, which reeks as it emanates from Karl Rove's pocketbook of swindles, is a perfect example of the arrogance of this Administration, which knows full well that it has knocked the world, free or not, so off kilter that our oldest and strongest alliances are threatened, perhaps lost in a morass of distrust, suspicion, and anger.

Now, naively, Mr. Bush has decided to include the entire Arab region in his adolescent scrutiny of the world and his equally wrongheaded belief that our form of democracy might be forced, not built, in a group of nations who have not managed to yet bring their masses into the seventeenth century, let alone the twenty-first.

Again we have proof of Mr. Bush's faithfulness to the Big Lie, this time in the form of dispensing with even the slightest notice of the reality of his own failures, and instead -- with acne-scarred, teenage bravado -- he thrusts these catastrophes toward new and intolerable heights.

Like a hoodlum caught in a stolen car, the President denies that his foreign policy is in shambles.

He sneers at Afghanistan in a pretense of victory -- while that forsaken nation flounders and sinks into yet another chasm of despair and the re-creeping power of Al Qaeda.

It seems simply an annoyance to Mr. Bush that the war in Iraq never ended as he loosely claimed on that aircraft carrier -- conceitedly clad in his infantile flight suit, complete with an imaginary full-to-bursting codpiece. His costumed stunt was a repulsive insult to the men and women who do lay their lives on the line for us from the cockpits of our war machines -- unlike Mr. Bush who spent the Vietnam war on a kind of holiday helping a political friend of his Poppy's so as to protect his princely skin -- and then to lie about it as he most certainly did.

The war in Iraq has become increasingly murderous, sending more and more of our sons and daughters home in "transfer tubes" (that is the new, sickening official Pentagon "designation" for the cooled aluminum tubes -- suitable for reuse -- within which body bags filled with the remains of our servicemen and servicewomen are contained as they are flown from the war zone back to native soil).

The American economy is in shambles -- despite the latest cooperation from what again this week has been exposed as our scandalous markets. Our own people will soon feel the sting of huge state and local tax increases -- a legacy from the Congressional Republican ruse of income tax cuts that pay off the rich. These hometown and home state increases will be huge -- as much as $5,000 each year per average family, this to make up for federal moneys that will no longer be flow from the Bush-bankrupted US Treasury. Good- and well-paying jobs have disappeared by the millions under the Bush watch, and men and women on unemployment have fallen off the rolls or taken minimum wage jobs -- slinging burgers rather than rivets -- while Bush tells us we've "added" 43,000 new jobs last week.

That's a lie.

And that's not even the worst of it.

God, with a small "g," has replaced "good" in our schools and courtrooms.

Bigotry is on the rise -- not only in the South, but on cable news networks and schools. And it's no longer just targeted against Blacks and people of color, but also against gays, women who want control of their bodies, and anyone who is not 100% Christian.

And now George W. Bush wants to expand his pathetically ill pretext for power -- cloaked in the rectitude of Democracy with a Big "D" -- to Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and anywhere else that doesn't toe his American line.

It all sounds first-rate, does it not?

Yet our form of democracy does not seem to work anywhere but here -- and even here is hasn't worked all that well.

The world watched in awe as our politically divided Supreme Court "selected" this "president" along party lines -- selected a man who had lost the popular vote by more than a million ballots.

It has watched as Republicans attempt to pack these same courts with bigots and ill-prepared lawyers who march to the right-wing corporatist-fascist Federalist Society tune.

It has watched as the President's oversight agencies, who were supposed to protect our parents from criminal investment banks and accounting firms, prostrated themselves to avarice and greed mongers.

The world has taken note.

It has seen us expediently change our rules so that the accused have no lawyers and no law to rely on.

It has watched in sickened shock as a Black man was dragged to his death in chains behind a pickup truck, and a gay boy was tethered to a fence to die.

It has watched us kill tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq on the pretense of delivering them from evil.

Perhaps we did -- trading one for another, but only as a convenient excuse for dominion.

Now we witness the aftermath of President Bush's latest remarks:
-- The Middle East, poised on tenterhooks;
-- Terrorists have invaded Saudi Arabia -- perhaps at the unknowing, ill-perceived invitation of Mr. Bush;
-- Palestinian terrorists are gaining financial and human support to spite what the Arab world sees as White House myopia in favor of Israel, although untrue -- a summons nonetheless from their point of view, and from our a man who should know enough to keep his mouth shut.

Why does our President not see the havoc he inflicts?

How does he justify the disdain for America by the majority of the non-American world?

The answer is simple.

He is ill-advised.

JEFF KOOPERSMITH is a political consultant, opinion research authority, policy analyst, and self-described "renegade lobbyist."